Public Knowledge, a Washington DC based public interest group, announced its Copyright Reform Act (CRA) project, which consists of model legislation proposing five reforms to copyright law. The reforms are intended to help restore the balance between rights holders and users in light of technological and legal changes since the last major overhaul of copyright law, the 1976 Copyright Act. These reforms are focused on five areas:
- updating fair use;
- reforming the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s overbroad anticircumvention provisions to allow circumvention of technical protection measures for lawful purposes;
- updating limitations and exceptions to copyright protection to reflect contemporary computer operations and information location technologies;
- adding measures to balance the notice and takedown power of rights holders; and
- streamlining music licensing.
On behalf of Public Knowledge, Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic students Pan C. Lee, Daniel S. Park, and Allen W. Wang authored an introductory summary of the reforms, which was released along with the announcement of the CRA. In the coming weeks, clinic students will produce a series of in-depth whitepapers on the reforms, each to be released along with proposed legislative language. Public Knowledge and the Clinic also released the first of these whitepapers and accompanying legislation, authored by Clinic Co-Director Jennifer Urban and focused on the fair use reform.